


Baptised In the Potomac

by ubertrash



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Flashbacks, Gen, Missing Scene, Past Torture, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-07-15 00:13:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16051484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ubertrash/pseuds/ubertrash
Summary: "There was an error in his code now; there was a new voice in his head and it said only one thing. It screamed:Run.Inexplicably, against every instinct he had, he trusted it. So, he ran."The Soldier in the months that followed the Triskelion.





	Baptised In the Potomac

**Author's Note:**

> \- I've tried my best to research character backstories, but I've mostly Frankensteined things together from MCU canon/ comics/ my own ideas, so apologies if things seem incorrect or inconsistent.  
> \- I guess this is technically Civil War compliant but I've also blatantly disregarded CW canon.  
> \- I tried my best to research PTSD etc. but clearly I'm no expert.

_(”Bucky?”)_

HYDRA was the core of the Earth, the centre of the Universe, a black hole that would swallow him. HYDRA was the heart that beat within him. HYDRA was home. On a cellular level he wanted to be back there, needed to be, for he would not survive without them. Except, there was an error in his code now; there was a new voice in his head and it said only one thing. It screamed:

Run.

Inexplicably, against every instinct he had, he trusted it. So, he ran.

Wet clothes chafe skin and he had red patches all over for days. His inner thighs bled. He ran until he passed the edge of the city, but it wasn’t far enough. He ran until he couldn’t, until his lungs burned, so he walked until he stumbled, and fell, and he found a hollowed out structure in an industrial park and crawled inside, where his body gave up on him despite his will and blackness took over. If this was death he would welcome it.

He awoke later to bright sun.

He picks his body up by its broken strings and sets to work. He doesn’t need to think, he just knows what to do, algorithmic: find food, find shelter, find medicine. Stay hidden. It is feral, he cannot think past his basic survival. Despite his exhaustion, he searches and steals and by sheer miracle gets all he needs, finds himself holed up in a foreclosed apartment block, and stockpiles like a bear for winter. He will feel guilty later for the things he took without permission; money, clothes, food, but it was necessary.

Ironically, it’s not until the door to his room is locked and barricaded that he begins to realise he might be free. The past few days feel like a dream. Finally, there are thoughts in his head, a voice that belongs to him (he thinks) and not somebody else. There are no orders. No mission. There is pain, yes, and fear, and pure, unparalleled panic cutting through the daze that clouds him still, but it is no longer secondary to a mission. He rejoices it, being able to feel again. 

Just as he thinks he’s got his head on straight, the new madness begins. He gets a headache worse than a head wound, and suddenly his thoughts won’t come in coherent strings anymore. At first, he thinks HYDRA are in his head, that they’ve managed to reach him remotely, and he spends hours waiting for a reboot to begin. Instead, he gets worse; his body starts to shake, he becomes nauseous. Symptoms of hunger, he thinks, but he vomits back up anything he eats. He cannot understand. He waits for the reboot but it doesn’t come. He loses minutes at a time. He forgets where he is. He lays on the floor and stares at the ceiling and his body aches and aches. Is he being punished? He wishes the Wipe would come; it’s painful for a minute but afterwards everything is clean again, his brain is blissfully empty. Right now, his skull is filled with soup, thoughts blending into one another. He strips down to his underwear when his body turns into a furnace and for a moment he wishes for the ice, only to seize up with shivers and fold himself under a blanket not minutes later. His blood burns, and he gasps and cries as his body is wracked with a mangle of convulsions and tries to turn itself inside out and he is certain he will die. Yet, his body persists. 

He wakes up with a head filled with clouds. He’s lost days. His muscles ache but they no longer tremble. For a week he moves slow like the dead, mercurial, and his heart is at risk of beating out of his chest, makes his insides feel filled with bubbles. His body rejects anything that isn’t small sips of water and sunlight hurts his eyes. Later, he discovers that this was withdrawal. A new phase begins.

\----------

The building he stays in is four storeys high. Not far away there is an office building with at least ten floors. Often, he stares out of the window and wonders how many falls he can survive.

\----------

_(”Start over.”)_

\----------

For a long time, his body feels foreign to him. Like an animal, he cannot recognise himself in the mirror.

His days are short. All he is capable of is eating and sleeping; tiredness bulldozes him like the boulder cursed on Sisyphus, a constant uphill battle. In his slumber, like a decaying corpse his hair grows longer and his body withers, he allows cobwebs to grow upon him but gives just enough to keep the machine ticking over.

He knows he has missed so much, and more than anything he yearns for information. He is lost, an agglomeration of fractured pieces suspended in space, a name pulled from deep within the depths of him his only lifeline - he wants to pull on the thread, even if it means he comes undone. He reads. Each book, each article, is like a precious gem, priceless. He spends his cherished hours of consciousness hunched over the pages, detailing the world’s history, HYDRA’s collapse, the man on the bridge, the name he gave him. Steve Rogers is still alive, and relief washes over him in waves, so much it almost makes him sick. 

Cut off one head, two more shall take it's place, they told him, but Alexander Pierce is dead, and knowing his handler is gone is what sets him free. 

After forty days and forty nights, when he eventually has the strength to stay awake for more than a few hours, he finally gets up and steps into the shower. Leaning against the tiles, he lets the water scald his skin and he is reborn. He shaves his face, eats a final meal, then packs his worldly possessions into a bag and leaves this place behind.

\----------

_James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes was born in Brooklyn, NY, on March 10th, 1917, the eldest of four children. He was orphaned by age 8 and joined the army in 1942, aged 25. He fought for 3 years, first in the 107th Regiment, then alongside the Howling Commandos, led by his childhood friend Steve Rogers, now known as Captain America. Barnes died during a mission in 1945 when he fell from a moving train._

_\----------_

_Welcome back, Cap._

He hates crowds and public spaces, but in the end his need for information wins out. Pulse pounding in his ears and chest tight like a vice, he ventures into the D.C. exhibit, and it tells him little that he does not already know; Captain America and his Howling Commandos are national icons and have been written about extensively, except they don’t have many pictures in books. 

The image on the display is not a mirror. He stands outside his body and sees himself staring at the photograph of James Barnes, dead eyed, each man a phantom of the other. He does not see the rest of the exhibit, instead, he locks himself in a bathroom and bites his sleeve so he doesn’t scream. 

He has James Barnes’ face, but it is impossible that he is James Barnes. Except, he remembers falling. 

\----------

_(”Bucky! Take my hand!”)_

_\----------_

He wishes to make scorched earth of this state, and heads north, since his body aches for the cold. By the time he reaches New York he is exhausted, but he will not stop, because he wants nothing more to do with James Barnes’ life. His goal is Canada, a fresh start, and before the day is up he’s seen Niagara Falls and rented a room in an Ontario apartment block. Some say the falls are one of the most beautiful sights in the world, but that night his bed is tough competition. 

_\----------_

He pours a glass of orange juice and accidentally knocks it to the floor. Glass shatters and juice spills everywhere. For some reason, he is so shocked that he cannot even fathom cleaning it up. His throat closes on him suddenly and water blurs his vision, spilling over his cheeks. He gasps, confused, because he does not remember this; if it was ever possible for him to cry, they made sure to beat it out of him.

This is not about the orange juice. 

He falls to the floor and sobs for hours, making his mouth dry and eyes raw. His body is broken and he cannot move, limbs heavy like lead while he bawls and bawls, half marvelling at the fact that it just won't stop, until all the feeling has been cried out of him, leaving him weightless and empty. The juice has become sticky now, and it makes it more difficult to clean up. Foolish of him, he thinks. For a while after, he feels numb, but as he crawls into bed that night he would say, for the first time, that he feels distinctly  _better_. The flood gates have opened. 

_\----------_

_(”Listen close, you always stand up.”)_

_\----------_

He only goes out after midnight, if he can help it. The library closes at six, but the grocery store is 24 hours, and there’s usually no one in there but him and the cashier at three in the morning.

Eating is a struggle. His body reacts badly to most foods at first, only accepting plain foods like bread, fruit or dry cereal, unsurprising since his stomach has been empty for decades, but it’s slowly getting used to things. He likes coffee, once he figured out how to make it sweet and with lots of milk, and chocolate is a revelation. Every time he goes to the store, he buys one thing new.

He quickly discovered that he cannot eat red meat. At the store, he avoids the aisle, and covers his eyes when he passes the butchers; it doesn’t conjure any specific memory, he just knows that the smell makes him sick to his stomach, and that muscle tearing under a knife is too familiar. 

_\----------_

He buys tattered books from thrift stores and makes notes in the margins, and keeps them in a stack by his bed, next to his library loans. It turns out they have VHS tapes you can borrow, too, so the next time he’s in a junk shop he gets himself a little square TV, covered in dust. The World War documentaries are interesting, pertinent, but they make his ribs tighten on him like a corset and his heart heavy, so sometimes he’ll swap them out for videos about how cars and planes are made. He likes the ambient noise coming from the tinny speakers, something to keep his blackened thoughts at bay.

_\----------_

His hair has grown too long and tiresome. It dangles over his eyes and tickles his nose, distracting him when he’s trying to read. One evening, he finally snaps. 

His body thrums with agitation as he grabs a knife from the kitchen and storms into the bathroom, stripping off his shirt. He takes the offending strands of hair at his forehead between his finger tips, pulls it taut, then saws until it breaks away. He is too angry to be efficient, but thank god, at least it doesn’t touch his nose anymore. Except, now the long, split-ended hair cascading over his shoulders seems out of place. It raises his pulse to feel it scratching against his skin. He grabs more chunks of hair and hacks at it haphazardly, until a few jagged inches all over have gone, leaving it long but uneven. Loose hair falls into the sink, dark and unsettling against the ceramic. 

His reflection is demonic in the harsh light as he leans in close to inspect it. The process of self-recognition has been painstaking and erratic, and even now it is still in its infancy. He paws at his face, the peaks and pits of his skin texture, prickly stubble on his jaw; he forces two fingers into his mouth and pulls his jaw open, sees his teeth filled with amalgam, lined up and a little crooked. His Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows, and he traces the hollow divet of his collar bone, all the way to the vast and sprawling crater of his shoulder. Without thinking he digs the knife in to the scar tissue, twists and wrenches upwards until a piece of flesh flakes off, revealing the slick metal underneath - it only stokes his delirium, and he revels in the scraping sound the tip of the knife makes when it moves against the metal. He can feel the machinery under his skin, through his chest and back, all the way down his spine. How much of him did they replace? He digs the blade in again, picks apart his tissue like a dissection and he can’t even feel it, possessed, he just needs to find the boundary where his body becomes a weapon, needs to scratch the itch in his circuit boards, needs to carve until the infection has been cut out, and the blood, copper-like and warm, runs down his chest and onto the floor into the sink where it mixes with his hair -

He remembers the sound the knife made when it hit the tiles but he doesn’t know how he made it to the floor, curled up by the bath as he is now. Pain, sharp and grounding, radiates from his side. What has he done? The debris of his body litters the room, the smell of blood is thick in his nostrils, smeared all over him, and he retches - 

He stays there for over an hour, numb, then carefully wraps his shoulder and goes to bed.

_\----------_

_(”The procedure has already started. You are to be the new fist of HYDRA.”)_

_\----------_

It doesn’t help that his hair looks fucking ugly. At least, his skin fixes itself. 

_\----------_

He begins researching anatomy. He finds resources on amputees, traumatic injuries from war, fake limbs and prosthesis. None of them look like him.

Still, he discovers more about the mind, memory loss and the treatment of Alzheimer's patients, short-term and long-term memory. He doesn’t have access to doctors or therapy, so he must make do with a healthy diet and crossword puzzles; he prefers Sudoku, since his cultural knowledge is so poor. Some books mention electro-shock therapy, but it is meant to heal, not destroy. 

He learns of panic attacks, and it makes him feel more normal.

_\----------_

The man from the bridge is on the news.

_Captain America Helps Homeless Veterans._

His combat outfit is swapped for plain clothes while they interview him:

“The Avengers have assembled again since SHIELD was dismantled, so you must be very busy. How do you find time for events like this?”

“Well, ma’am, this is as much of a duty of mine as my work with the Avengers. It’s important that we protect our citizens in more practical ways, like giving food and shelter to those who are struggling. As you know, I have a military background, so this is quite close to home for me. All of the people I fought with were - are so brave, and we simply can’t forget about the great men and women who were willing to lay down their lives for this country. It’s vital that we offer this kind of support to help them - all of them.”

He winds back the broadcast over and over, mesmerised, his jaw hanging open and his face inches from the screen. He studies the man’s face and it is blessedly free from scars, knitted back together much like his own flesh. His smile is easy and kind, warm.

When he gets a small static shock from the TV, it lights up his brain like a supernova. He falls to his knees screaming and wakes up twenty minutes later in a pool of his own vomit.

He takes the TV outside and smashes it to pieces.

\----------

He won’t stay in a place for more than a few weeks. He travels from city to city, leaving no trace of him behind. If he keeps moving, they can’t find him, he tells himself. If he just keeps going, the past cannot catch up to him. 

_(”If you start running, they’ll never let you stop.”)_

\----------

He goes to Minnesota.

He crossed the border with nothing but stolen clothes and stolen cash, and he rents a run-down apartment in a run-down block of flats in a run-down neighbourhood. As a house-warming present to himself he buys a kettle, something he didn’t have before, and he starts to accumulate more things outside of his basic survival needs: an old radio, a potato peeler, a mug from a thrift store that has a Van Gogh painting on it (why does he remember Van Gogh?).

Perhaps, this time, he’ll stay a little longer. 

He hadn’t even thought to buy furniture before, but when he finds a beaten up couch set on the pavement he decides to drag it inside, and uses his miniature sewing kit to repair the holes in the upholstery. A few weeks later he spots a wooden chair abandoned outside the grocery store, and he carries it the three blocks home.

There were flower boxes left behind when he moved in, and he’s left them untouched on the balcony ever since. One day, outside the library, there’s a gardening fair for kids, and he can’t help but think of the forgotten flower boxes; he buys two packs of tomato seeds, with assurances that they are one of the easiest vegetables to grow. He couldn’t justify buying flowers since they have no real use, but at least he might be able to eat the tomatoes one day. It’s the first time he really starts to look forward to something in the future.

\----------

_World War II was a conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during the years 1939–45. The principal belligerents were the Axis powers—Germany, Italy, and Japan—and the Allies—France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and, to a lesser extent, China. Between 40 and 50 million people were killed, making it the deadliest conflict in human history -_

\----------

“Excuse me?”

He desperately wishes that the voice isn’t addressed to him, but he’s the only person around. He’s just getting back from the library.

“Excuse me, young man?”

His chest tightens on his lungs and his fists clench tight. The voice comes from the balcony above him, and it belongs to an elderly lady wearing a patterned tracksuit, smoking a cigarette. Her accent is distinctly southern. She pushes her large sunglasses off her face and into her frazzled grey hair.

“Young man?”

“Yes?” he says, and his voice comes out small. He tries his best not to talk to people; the most he’s spoken in the past few months are ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’s to store employees. 

“You live in this building? I’ve seen you around here before.”

This frail old woman is making him feel faint, it’s pathetic. Alarm bells start ringing in his brain. What if she’s one of them? She’s working for HYDRA. They’ve found me. I’m going back. I’ll get the chair, I’ll get the chair, I’ll get the -

“Have you seen my cat?”

Oh. Is it possible that she really is just another resident of the building? Yes, he reminds himself, it’s the same woman who sits out on her balcony for most of the day, drinking coffee and smoking her cigarettes. He sees her almost every time he leaves the building.

“He’s eight years old.” she says to him. “Long-haired, white and orange. About this big.” she says, moving her hands in a medium-sized box shape, smoke dangling from her fingers. “His name’s Fred.”

His brain is short-circuiting, he can feel it.

“Sorry, I can’t help you.” he chokes out, and charges into the building. 

“Hey. Hey!” the woman yells, but he can barely hear her over the blood rushing in his ears. He storms into his apartment and barricades the door. 

_\----------_

_Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, known as PTSD, is an anxiety disorder caused by a traumatic event in a person’s life. People with PTSD might experience nightmares and flashbacks, alongside feelings of guilt, isolation and irritability. Other symptoms include:_

_\- Insomnia_

_\- Difficulty Concentrating_

_\- Paranoia_

_\- Depression_

_\- Suicidal Thoughts_

_There are many ways to treat this condition -_

_\----------_

Clothing is his armour. He’s swapped riot gear for threadbare hoodies, a minimum of three layers at a time. He tries to make himself loose and formless, invisible, concealed under the stolen scraps of other people. The only part of him that can be exposed is his face, but even then he has his hair as a veil and usually a pair of shades and a hat pulled low over his eyes; he is a fugitive of the world, and he must remain hidden. 

In the cold, wearing scarves over his nose makes him claustrophobic, memories of the mask gripping him. The ice is in his veins so he wraps himself up to thaw against it, but all the jackets in Minnesota couldn’t help him. Cryo-freeze was slow death, stasis, but the dead need not fear the living and sometimes his coffin felt more like a cocoon, somewhere to keep him safe. On days when the embrace of the cryo chamber seems appealing, he’ll stuff blankets between the wall and the couch and bury himself between the layers, protected on all sides. It’s a poor substitute, but it’s only temporary. 

_\----------_

_Steven Grant Rogers was born in New York on July 4th, 1918. A sickly child of a single mother, he joined the army in 1942, aged 24, and was subject to the experimental treatments of Doctor A. Erskine. After successfully receiving the super-soldier serum, Rogers adopted the identity of Captain America and he fought for two years alongside the Howling Commandos. In an astonishing act of bravery and self-sacrifice, in 1945 he flew a plane into the Atlantic Ocean, saving the lives of millions, but killing himself. However, in 2011 he was discovered alive and well, preserved in ice._  

_\----------_

Did you know that they can clone sheep? They discovered DNA - the code that programmes human beings - in 1953, and he wonders how it is that HYDRA managed to hack into his and corrupt it. Almost every disease that made Steve sick has been eradicated, computers fit into your pocket now and there’s cars that run on electricity. It’s incredible.

_\----------_

Thunder rolls overhead and the sight of lightning renders him immobile. He is forced to watch as a passive onlooker, a prisoner in his own body, as a film reel plays over and over in front of his eyes. They beat him senseless, shock him within an inch of his life, they do not anaesthetise him for surgeries they cut him open just to see how fast it’ll heal he is punished if he makes a sound they strap him to the chair for days he can hear the buzzing in his skull it rattles him sets his body on fire a white light burning pain hurts so much he screams blacks out can’t remember anything can’t remember anything. What is your name?

The rain is quite beautiful, actually - he even cracks his window open a little to let the smell inside. He weathers the storm and doesn’t leave his room for the rest of the week. 

_\----------_

_(”Soldat?”)_

_\----------_

He’s about to go shopping when he finds a cat sat on his door step. It meows at him, and it somehow feels condescending. He shuts the door in the cats face, but his hand won’t let go of the door knob. When he opens the door again, the cat comes scurrying inside.

Cat’s got a tracker inside it. Cat belongs to HYDRA. HYDRA have found him. Get rid of the cat, get rid of the cat -

The cat has long hair, white and orange. His name is Fred. Fred sits in the middle of the floor and stares at him. He’s got a diamante collar with a bell on it. Clearly, he belongs to the woman from the balcony.

He knows that returning the cat is the right thing to do, and the frustrating thing is that it’s so easy: just walk upstairs and knock on the lady’s door, except he can’t do that because - because -

He sits down on the floor and Fred sniffs disinterestedly at his knee, puttering around the apartment like he owns the place before returning to sit in his lap. He discovers that cats dislike being pet with gloves, but that they don’t mind metal fingers. It takes him two hours to finally tip the scales in the right direction and convince himself to return the stupid cat, so long that Fred has fallen asleep in his lap. He counts backwards from a hundred and heads upstairs, cat cradled awkwardly in his arms.

The woman looks positively radiant when she opens the door. 

“Freddy!” she cries, wrangling him out of his arms, and smothers the cat with kisses. “Oh my good Lord, child, thank you so much! Where did you find him?”

“Uh.” he says, mind stuttering to a halt. The faster he answers the faster he can get out of here. “Outside - just outside my room.” he mutters. 

“Oh, you naughty boy!” she coos to the cat, and sets him down on the floor. He trots happily back into her apartment and she (unfortunately) turns her attention to him again. “Come in, come in, let me make you a drink -”

“No, thanks.” he insists, trying not to sound ungrateful, or crazy. It feels incredible to have helped her, to be useful, but he just can't be around people. 

She crosses her arms and leans against the door jamb, looking him over. The wrinkles at the edges of her eyes deepen. 

“What’s your name, sweetheart?” she asks him. 

He didn’t ask to be sent spiralling into an identity crisis today. Stupid fucking cat, he thinks. He can’t tell her he doesn’t have a name, since that just makes no sense, but anxiety has jammed a wrench into his brain so he’s in no place to make up something convincing, and, on top of that, for some reason, he doesn’t want to lie to her. 

_(Bucky?)_

“James.” he says, and it feels clumsy leaving his mouth. He hasn’t done this before, he hasn’t done this before, he’s never had to - 

“Well, James, I’m Martha. It’s very nice to meet you.” She holds out her left hand to shake, and it honestly feels like the world is playing tricks on him. But, he tells himself not to be rude, and reaches out to shake her hand with his metal fist. Thank god he remembered his gloves. 

“Ooh, you’re a strong boy!” Martha hollers, grinning. “If I ever have some heavy lifting to do I’ll know who to call.” 

He tries to give her a polite smile, but he needs to be back in his locked apartment five minutes ago, groceries be damned.

“Okay, thanks.” he mumbles, and turns to go. 

“No, thank you, James!” she calls after him. “You ever need anything, you know where to find me.”

_\----------_

_That skinny kid was going to get himself badly hurt trying to defend other boys from bullies, and he knew he needed to step in. The kid had a scraped knee and he helped him clean it up in the boys’ bathroom so he wouldn’t get in trouble. His name was Steve and he didn’t have a dad anymore either. At recess they played tag and he let Steve catch him._

_\----------_

Martha waves at him from her balcony when he leaves the building now.

_\----------_

A few days ago he noticed his wall paper was peeling, and now the faded green-brown hue of it makes his eyes hurt, facing off with him while he tries to concentrate on reading. He knows there’s a hardware store not far from here, he scouted it all out when he first moved in, but the place is big, corporate and unfamiliar. At first he can only walk past it, a few days later he can step foot inside, but less than a minute in the panic grips him and he all but runs home, spends an hour hunched over the toilet bowl.

He hates fluorescent lights, he hates the way they buzz, he hates wide open spaces, he hates his view obstructed by tall aisles, he hates being surrounded by potential weapons.

He strips off a piece of wall paper every day until a month later the wall is bare. By now, he’s visited the hardware store six times and can spend ten minutes in there without losing control; he knows exactly where the decorating section is and he’s already bought a paint brush. The exits are mapped out clearly in his mind and there are three knives on his person.

Not long before closing time, he stands in front of a wall of colour swatches. The choice is overwhelming.

“Hi, can I help you?”

He has to force himself not to jump, not to grab the employees throat, to throw her into the wall of paint cans and sprint home, grab his pre-packed bag and go to the next city -

“Hard to choose, huh?” the girl says, with a heavy Minnesotan accent. She smiles brightly at him. “What colour were you thinking?”

“Uh.” he says, balling up his fists. 

(Breathe, 1, 2, 3 - )

“Well, neutrals are always good.” she says, gesturing to some browns and whites at one end of the display. He thinks of the muddy colour of the wall paper, the nondescript carpet and white tiled floor of his kitchen. 

“No.” he gets out. “Boring.”

“Oh.” she smiles, “In that case, something a little brighter? Have you got a preference?” 

He’d read a little about colour, the symbolism and the science; red was for passion, but it also meant danger, the colour of blood and - no. Purple was for royalty and riches, and it said blue was the colour of sadness, but that it could also make you feel calm, and if that was the case, he wanted to feel blue all the time - bluer, calmer. 

“Blue.” he blurts out. 

(Breathe, 6, 7, 8 - )

He can’t even try to listen as she cheerfully explains hues and undertones to him, concentrating on not suffocating on his own panic, but in the end he points unceremoniously to a deep blue shade that catches his eye, and after that he’s out of there in three minutes flat. He scurries home and slams the paint tin on the counter, breathing hard; it takes him a while to calm down, but when he looks up and sees the blue label silhouetted against the wall he can’t help but think:  _perfect_.

He paints the wall the next day; he gets paint all over his clothes and thinks maybe he should have accepted the suggestion of a dust sheet, but even if the edges are messy and the coats are uneven, this is the first thing he’s done that’s not purely utilitarian in nature. It’s the first thing he’s done for himself, just because he wanted to. For a while he can’t even concentrate on his book because he’s so damn proud of his new blue wall.

_\----------_

His body exists at polar ends. He spends days in bed or he cannot sleep at all, tossing fitfully as if he could shake the nightmares off himself. He is starving, he is sick; he gorges himself on sweets and desserts and pasta and still he craves more, or his body has no wants at all, not food or drink or sleep or anything. 

Some days he is empty, others he is filled to the brim with sadness, or anger, or fear. His tempestuousness will eventually give rise to calmer seas, but sometimes the feeling of drifting is worse, as if he is waiting for direction, and he would much rather be in the eye of the storm, terrified, at the mercy of the elements, but able to think for himself. To be able to feel. They stole emotion from him before, so now he is willing to suffer for it - they can take it from his cold, dead hands. 

_\----------_

_(”Kill him, or we’ll break your legs again, Soldier. Do you want that? Do it.”_

_He does as he’s told, and they break his legs anyway.)_

_\----------_

“So, where are you from?”

He looks up from his coffee, black, with lots of sugar to make up for the lack of creamer, to where Martha is sat across from him in her comfy, worn-out arm chair. Her bright pink lipstick contrasts with the blue eye-shadow that sits luminous on her brown skin, paired disquietingly with her red nails, her kaftan and cheetah print slippers. She’s half way through her second cigarette. 

“You’ve not got an accent, you ain’t from here.” she continues. 

“Neither are you.” he counters. 

She’s hounded him for weeks to come and have a drink with her, a reward for rescuing (finding, he insists) her cat. As promised, she even baked a cake.

“No, sir, I’m from Tennessee. Moved up here to be closer to my grandkids. Now, where you from?”

He decided a while ago to simply play the part, reciting facts from history books.

“Brooklyn.” he says, hiding behind his mug. 

“Oh, Brooklyn.” she drawls, raising her eyebrows. “What’s a big city boy like you doing in a place like this?” 

He wishes she would ask simpler questions. James Barnes was born on March 10th in Brooklyn, he had three sisters, his parents died when he was young, he enjoyed boxing, he does not know why he left Brooklyn because he didn’t.

“Are you military?” Martha asks, and the observation sharply startles him. The familiar anticipation starts to fill him like a balloon. 

“Yes.” he agrees flatly. James Barnes joined the army in 1942, aged 25. He became a Sergeant. He was killed in action in 1945. 

_(”Take my hand!”)_

Martha hums contentedly.

“Yeah, I’ve seen your type before; way you hold yourself, quiet, paranoid. Rent’s cheap up here so it attracts people on army pensions - especially those with injuries. That arm’s not real, is it?”

The urge to run has become almost unbearable. He’s afraid he might crack the cup in his hands.

“How did you - “

“C’mon, sweetheart, no reason for you to be wearin’ gloves indoors.”

“Maybe I’m cold.” he grumbles. He always is, too, staving off the chill etched deep into his bones by the ice.

“Won’t fool me, sugar.” she laughs. “But I won’t judge. Here, why don’t you have a slice?” she asks, pushing the cake tin towards him. 

Miraculously, his panic has disappeared, and all that’s left is the feeling that a giant weight has been lifted off his shoulders. That, and a sudden sweet craving. 

The cake is good. Martha doesn’t ask him anymore questions, and he mostly sits and listens to her while she rants and raves about recipes and politics and the neighbourhood, sending him on his way an hour later with a chunk of cake wrapped in aluminium and a promise to meet up again sometime soon. 

_\----------_

_Best friends since childhood, Bucky Barnes and Steven Rogers were inseparable on both schoolyard and battlefield -_

_\----------_

He keeps a journal now and he carries it everywhere, tucked inside the inside pocket of his jacket. Memories don’t always resurface at convenient times. He might sit stoic in a corner of the library, visions playing on loop while his two realities clash. Often, he wakes fitful from dreams and must piece together the scraps before they unravel and disappear like smoke. In the morning, he has to decipher his scribbles and more often than not they make no sense, trying to separate dream from reality. He feels like a layman trying to perform neurosurgery on his own brain. 

His own life is a mystery to him, and it would be just as well to write it from scratch, fantasy from start to finish. It wouldn’t feel real to him either way.

_\----------_

He sees a dead bird on the side of the road and cries for two hours when he gets home.

Last week he remembered killing Nazis in the war and didn’t feel a thing.

_\----------_

_(For a while, he thought they might rescue him. They laughed at him when he called out Steve’s name, but once they put him in the chair, it didn’t take long for him to forget it.)_  

_\----------_

There’s a knock at his door. He grabs a knife, his muscles designed for combat acting out of reflex, and listens through the wood.

“James? I need a strong man to open this jar for me.”

He releases his breath and puts the knife on the counter top, opening the door. 

“That’s a nice arm you got there.” Martha says, as he easily twists the jar open. He doesn’t have his gloves on. “The hell kind of insurance are you on?”

“I don’t ask questions.” he says, handing the jar of plum jam back to her. 

“Want company?” she asks him, and waves the jar around. “I’m making pie. Could always do with some help in the kitchen.”

James has never baked a thing in his life, so the venture is predictably disastrous - but when he spills flour everywhere later that evening, comically turning himself ghost white, he laughs for the first time he can remember. Martha has to sit down she’s laughing so hard, and the feeling in his chest is utterly indescribable. He sees light at the end of the tunnel, even if only a flicker, even if only for a moment.

The pie is delicious, as always. Back in his room, cleaning the flour from his metal joints is long and arduous, but every second is worth it.

_\----------_

He sleeps fully clothed, right down to his boots, waiting to be awoken and ready to run for his life, always with his back pressed to the wall, curled protectively on himself like a baby in the womb.

He remembers how Steve used to sleep coiled up and wrapped in blankets to conserve his warmth, and how he could sprawl flat on his back when he became big and strong and took up more space, and how Steve would still mould himself to his back in the cold trenches, how he sometimes wakes up with the ghost of Steve’s breath on his neck -

_\----------_

_(”People are gonna die, Buck. Please don’t make me do this.”)_

_\----------_

Occasionally, he forgets to eat. The longest he went was five days. He does not wilfully starve himself, but sometimes the task of preparing food seems too momentous and the thought of leaving his apartment is unquestionable. He wonders if sometimes his body needs to purge the things inside, the memories, the nightmares, because everything will make him sick, even the bread and fruit he relied on in the beginning. He imagines drinking bleach to clean him from the inside out, expelling all the darkness, but he sits hunched over the toilet bowl, retching, until the feeling passes. 

_\----------_

Martha asks him to look after Fred while she visits family for the holidays. She looks a little sad when he confirms that he has no where he needs to be. One cold morning in December, she drops Fred off hurriedly with curlers still in her hair, rattling off instructions about how often to feed him and brush him, and hands him a kitty over-night bag, alongside a tin of Christmas pudding. It’s not his favourite dessert, but the kind gesture makes it taste extra sweet. 

To his absolute delight, he remembers the words to Christmas carols that play over and over on the radio:  

 _O holy night! The stars are brightly shining,_ _It is the night of our dear Saviour's birth._ _Long lay the world in sin and error pining,_ _Till He appear'd and the soul felt its worth._

He mumbles the lyrics as he sits propped up in bed, reading, Fred curled up fast asleep at his feet. It takes less than a day for both him and his apartment to be covered in fur.

His apartment, of course, isn’t decorated, and Martha didn’t have time to decorate hers, so when she returns on New Year’s Eve he helps her put up a tree and some fairy lights, as well as some disgusting yet alluring stuff called tinsel. She brought back a plethora of leftovers, so they eat cornbread and pumpkin pie and they toast with cheap wine while the clock strikes midnight.

For weeks, he misses the sound of Freddy’s bell jingling around his room. At the store, he buys discount ginger bread cookies, and on a whim he gets himself a pine tree scented candle for 75% off. The Christmas card Martha gave him remains pinned up on the wall. 

_\----------_

_In an ironic twist of fate, his prison camp was liberated by none other than his childhood friend, Steve Rogers, now Captain America._

He lies in bed but he can feel needles poking his skin. He is paralyzed. They chose him to be taken to the room from which men do not return. It is not the first time he thinks he will die, and it is certainly not the last. The doctors left suddenly, and he is alone, strapped down and spiralling into the dark -

_Is that? -_

_“Bucky?”  
_

_“Steve?”  
_

_“Yeah, it’s me, it’s Steve.”_

_Steve,_  he mouths silently to the ceiling now.  _I thought you were smaller._

_I thought you were dead._

All he can see is fire, suddenly. He closes his eyes tight against it, but it stays, he feels the heat on his skin and he tears off his jacket, wrestles with it and he feels caught. The restraints are on him, the scene plays over again,  _Sergeant, 32557038, Is that? Bucky? Steve? I thought you were dead. I thought you were smaller -_

He can’t move until it’s over, but when it is, he sits bolt upright, breathing hard, and the memories begin to fade. He reaches blindly for his notebook, scribbling chicken scratch into the page, a crude little drawing of the examination table to help him remember. A few minutes later, as his breathing returns to normal, he still gets startled by his metal hand. 

_\----------_

_(”You’ve known me your whole life.”)_

_\----------_

One day, he realises he cannot remember his own mother’s face, and he is forced to wonder if the memory was stolen from him, or if she simply died when he was too young to remember her. There are no pictures of her. Somehow, it seems ill-fitting that he has a mother, that he was ever a child; it seems easier to imagine that a monster like him emerged from darkness, fully formed, that he simply is and was not made to be. Perhaps it’s easier to think, that way, nothing was taken from him, since you cannot miss the things you did not have.

If he had a mother, she is now dead. If he had family, they are dead. If he had friends, they are dead. The only thing left is him, and -

_\----------_

_(“I can’t believe you let them do this to you.”  
_

_“Buck -”  
_

_“A science experiment! You’re the stupidest fucking guy in the army, you know that, punk? The things I outta do to you -”)_

\----------

He’s helping Martha fold her laundry. Her arthritis has been flaring up again.

“Does that look neat to you?” she snaps playfully, and demands he fold the sheet again. “My son does it wrong too.” 

“Your son?” he asks, carefully folding the sheet how she told him. 

Martha sighs and sits back in her chair. Fred stirs in her lap.

“Yeah.” she mumbles. “I don’t see him much. I wasn’t very good to him when he was younger.”

He folds a few towels in silence.

She continues, “I had a drug problem. I had him when I was very young, when I didn’t know how to be a good mother. Now I’m trying to make up for lost time.”

She looks him dead in the eyes, her expression soft yet serious, and he can’t look away.

“We rarely get second chances, but it’s never too late to start over.” she tells him, as if speaking directly to his soul. He’s told her almost nothing about his past, and yet she can still see the darkness in him. Thankfully, she can also see the light, and she makes a point to remind him of it every now and then. 

“Now, give me that pillow case.” she says sternly. “Your technique is terrible.”

_\----------_

_(”I’m not gonna fight you.”)_

\----------

He thinks the arm is faulty. They would fix him after every mission, wash the blood off him, reset his bones and solder the arm back into working order. These days the arm feels heavy, he can feel it tug at his skin and it sends his muscles into spasms. Sometimes, it’s sensors go into overdrive and the brush of fabric feels like fire ants marching up his spine. 

_Steve reaches out with a skinny arm to touch his shoulder -_

He cannot fathom the memory of it, since his shoulder is gone now and metal does not yield like flesh.  His body cannot remember. Violently, he recalls cheekbones crumbling under his fist, skin splitting open red,  _pink, like his lips, when he would reach out and touch his face softly -_

pinned underneath him -

_\- he would blush pink on his pale, freckled cheeks, the skin warm under his lips -_

Steve doesn’t have freckles anymore. He must be remembering wrong, caught in crossed wires.

\----------

_(”I’m with you ‘til the end of the line.”)_

\----------

He needs answers. There are no more books, no more documentaries, no more news articles, he has read and seen it all. He feels no closer to knowing what happened to him, but he knows some people who might. Co-ordinates of every HYDRA base are burned into his mind. He remembers Central Europe: Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, Sokovia, the list goes on; he knows most of the bases will be empty after HYDRA’s collapse, but there’s a chance that records are still on file. It’s a chance he has to take. He leaves in two weeks. 

Martha knocks on his door the morning that he leaves, carrying Fred under one arm. Thirteen days ago he picked the tomatoes from his plant and went upstairs to tell her his plans; she scalded him and tried to ask questions, looking quietly disappointed, then showed him how to make fresh tomato soup. 

“We’re here to say goodbye.” she says, “May I come in?”

The only people to step foot in this room are him and the cat, but seeing as he won’t be here much longer, he feels no need to keep his room a secret anymore, so he steps aside. She places Fred on the floor and takes in the room for a moment, impassive; the tidy kitchenette, his freshly made bed, the duffel bag waiting by the door. She trails her hand over the blue wall as she goes.

“Nice colour.” she says.

“I did it myself.” he tells her, quietly proud. 

“I can tell.” she quips, and winks at him. Fred meows at his feet, so he crouches down and pets his head.

“Hey, Freddy.” he whispers, scratching under his chin. He’s going to miss this stupid cat. 

“Here, I made you these.” Martha announces, and sticks her arms out to pass him a pair of gloves, hand-knitted. “A little ‘Thank you’ present, to say goodbye.”

The thought of someone giving him a gift is almost incomprehensible, and his eyes well up with tears. The kindness Martha has shown him has been unjustified at every turn, and even now he doesn’t understand why she bothers. As he gratefully accepts her gift, cradling the soft gloves as if they were made of glass, she reaches up to pat his cheek. It must look hilarious, given that she stands at a grand five foot two. 

“C’mon, you big baby, don’t get all sappy on me now.”

He mumbles his thanks and an apology, and she puts her hand firmly on his arm.

“It’s been real nice getting to know you, James." she says resolutely, "It can get lonely, but you’ve been so sweet. Now, you go out there and do something good, for the both of us.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” he says.

For months he has been missing ghosts, mourning people he does not remember, grieving for a past self he never knew, but when he leaves Martha behind he is stunned with a true sense of loss.

\----------

_(When Sarah died, it closed a chapter in their shared lives. Like ripping off a band-aid, he thought maybe the worst part was over, because no matter what, he knew that he'd never let Steve be alone the same way he was when he was young. They would move forward together. For a few years, he was right, but he could have never known what was to come.)_

\----------

Touching down in Europe feels like coming home, and it makes him sick to his stomach. 

\----------

He rents an apartment in Poland and meets the man living across from him when he’s leaving to buy groceries.

“Hey, man, I’m Jozef, nice to meet you.” the man says, reaching out his hand. 

He still does not know how to behave around strangers; his mouth still does not know how to form a smile, but he is trying.

“Bucky.” He replies. “Nice to meet you.”

\----------

Almost every HYDRA base is abandoned, some already ravaged.

In Serbia, the cryo chambers loom over him, but the beastly chair lays wilted in the centre of the room, smashed to pieces. He wonders who on Earth holds an equal grudge against it, enough to destroy it, but he is grateful nonetheless. Still, the sight of it makes him weak, and his fingers tremble as he tries to bring the ancient computers to life. 

He’s travelled to nine sites in five countries, and though no single document can tell him everything, and he is sure there are other forces at work that keep him in the dark, it doesn’t stop him from finding the truth. So far, he knows he’s responsible for the deaths of 17 people, and counting. Begging for forgiveness would be a farce.

If HYDRA found him today, they would either kill him or turn him back into a monster, and if there wasn’t the risk of more people dying at his hands, he would let them do it. He would deserve it. He would deserve far, far worse for what he’s done. 

\----------

He is back to square one: all he can do is eat and sleep, his neighbours circle him like lions, the gears in his body grind nearly to a halt, and he becomes catatonic. Guilt devours him from the inside out, hollow and gravitational, making him wraith-like, sick. 

The worst part is, he can’t even remember them. The people he killed are strangers to him; he stole their final breaths and he can’t even remember doing it. Some might call that a mercy, but all it does is add to his remorse. How selfish is he that he can remember minute details of his own suffering, but nothing of those who suffered at his hands? 

To carry on living only prolongs his misery and perverts justice, each breath he draws undeserving and cruel. 

\----------

_(”Your work has been a gift to mankind.”)_

\----------

He cups his hands over his mouth, his nose, his cheeks, and stares at himself in the mirror.

 _Ah,_ he thinks _, there’s a face I recognise._

At first, they tried to mutilate him, but somehow his body grew back. In the end, they settled on a mask. In the end, if they were trying to steal his identity, they succeeded. Right now, he tries his best to make his eyes look hard, intimidating - the last thing these people saw before they died - but that fearsome vacancy is gone now and he can’t replicate it. The relief is overwhelming. 

If there is any solace, it’s that the man he is now is not the thing they made him to be. He was baptised in the Potomac river and made new again; he was not free from sin, however, for those who are ignorant to their crimes cannot be forgiven, but now his eyes are open. He can begin to make amends. Though he still wishes desperately that he had died in that frozen ravine, another tragic but harmless casualty of war, there is still hope that he can salvage the man he used to be, a purer version of himself. 

He craves penitence and absolution, and if the only person he can save is Bucky Barnes, then so be it. Besides, he’d made Martha a promise. 

\----------

He buys tomatoes and makes soup. He feeds stray cats in the neighbourhood. He helps Jozef build some furniture. He plants forget-me-not’s in a hanging basket outside. 

Not every day is good. Some days, his body might turn to stone, paralysed with agony. His body count is up to 23 at least, and he keeps a list of their names in the back of his memory journal. He still doesn’t remember them, but at least this way he can try to.

\----------

His birthday passes without consequence. He is 98, but not really. 

\----------

_(”Buck.”_

_Steve is sick. Really sick, this time. He’s never been this scared before, and he doesn’t think he ever will be again. Losing him would be -_

_“Bury me next to Mom. Promise me?”  
_

_“It’s not gonna come to that -”  
_

_“Promise me, Buck.”_

_He’s a liar, because the only way Steve will end up in the ground is if he’s right there with him. It’s one of those things that will always be true._

__“I promise.”_ )_

\----------

The well has run dry.

They did not drive the stake deep enough, and HYDRA has been resurrected; he’s reckless but not stupid, and he is too afraid to pursue their secrets any further. He’s not martyr material. 

His memories have slowed to a crawl, nothing new resurfaced for weeks, and he is becoming desperate. Before, he loathed to meet the man that Steve knew, but now he is dedicated to his recovery, devoted to digging himself out of the icy grave he fell into over seventy years ago. However - his cirrhosis brain has been bled dry and he needs someone to cure him, someone who knew him before this disease took over, because it’s true: he did die in 1945, and this whole time he has simply been laying in wait. He can no longer flourish in isolation; the bubble must burst, he must leave limbo and travel across the River Styx back into the world of the living. He must let himself be known.

The files told him his exact weight and height, his blood type, they list every chemical that HYDRA put in his veins and how long he’d been asleep. He is numbers to them. He is nothing. 

Just as the Winter Soldier is a weapon, Captain America is a symbol, not a man. The books and the exhibits do not like to talk about Steve’s life before the serum, and they barely mention him at all, their story unfit for the propaganda machine. They became relevant when they became useful, which is a shame, because he’s convinced that the time before the war is when they were their best. Before the war, they were real, and everything since has been a terrible dream.

He knows he cannot go back, but he cannot go forward until he knows where he came from. Maybe then he can become something new - not better, but different. Something good. 

\----------

_(Steve grins at him with red teeth, bony knuckles scraped raw._

_“I had him on the ropes”, he says._

_The bruising hasn’t gone down from last week and there’s blood spilled down his chin like red wine. In the same way that great mountains fill you with fear and wonder, he is beautiful - sublime.)_

\----------

His heart beats just a little faster when he thinks of Steve now. He has not felt a pull this strong since HYDRA, and it scares him to his very core, scares him to death, because he knows Steve is the only person in the whole world who can help him. He is terrified of rejection, even more terrified of acceptance, but the condemnation of doing nothing is worst of all. 

He knows, as he did when he ran from the river bank, that he must go now. So, he does. 

\----------

_(”Where are we going?”_

_“The future.”)_

**Author's Note:**

> -I have ideas for a Civil War re-write and this is both a precursor to that and a stand-alone fic. At the end, Bucky has decided to actively seek out Steve, rather than waiting to be found and/or avoiding him.


End file.
